Forecast 2016: Project Management Trends and Predictions

As 2016 starts, changes will be expected in the trends in project management. Business analysts and technical experts have shared their various predictions and forecast for this year.

Mobility. The concept of teams working remotely from various parts of the world will continue to grow in 2016. There has been no sign of it slowing down and in fact, cloud project tools have enabled these project teams to collaborate with each other even if they have different time zones. Virtual teams using Web based and mobile applications will increase this year. While mobility is up, this would mean more chances for people working virtually from home and there will be a decrease in project management offices (PMOs).

Chief Project Officer (CPO). In the previous decades, there have been an emergence of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and eventually, the Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs). This trend has brought insights to the probability of having a Chief Project Officer (CPO) because of the complexity of project management. Various new trends will take its time and require people who can think outside of the box. Also, this critical C-level position has already been suggested by business leaders as well as technical experts.

While many companies have embraced ‘agile’ technologies, it will be more essential in 2016. Agile project management methods has become aligned with project management software solutions as well as applications. With both concepts being combined, there will be easier manageability of large-scale projects.

Customer Stakeholders. While this may come very surprising, the project management trend in 2016 will include the customers as stakeholders. Customers nowadays will not be acting like how the previous ones are — “wait and see the results”. No! They are going to want more transparency and visibility of the project updates and they will become more demanding. Stakes will rise to be very high that these customers wouldn’t want to leave anything by chance.

Risk Management. With the increase in cybercrime and cybersecurity cases in the past year, there is no doubt that project managers will prioritize risk management in 2016. Hackers have become smarter through the years and if the project entails sensitive data, then there is a need for risk management to be among the priorities of the manager.

Improvement in PM System. Since customers are now the new stakeholders who will need extended participation in the updates of the project, the project teams need to employ a process and technology that will let their customers join in and become more visible in the processes. Gone are the days when customers act as pure investors. This year, project management will evolve into a more improved system.

The year 2016 will definitely be a big year for project management. There may be other trends and predictions that other analysts have in mind. Our predictions might also be wrong. However it is, 2016 is still a long way to go and the most important thing is that everybody concerned has to be ready with all the changes that are yet to come.